Madeleine McCann's parents lose their latest court battle against Portugal

MADRID, 20 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that the State of Portugal did not at any time violate the rights of Kate and Gerry McCann due to the statements made by a former Portuguese commissioner who had linked Madeleine McCann's parents to her disappearance in May 2007, since at the time the investigators considered them suspicious.

The parents of the three-year-old girl who disappeared in the Algarve alleged in their lawsuit that former commissioner Gonçalo Amaral, who was initially responsible for the case, had violated their right to reputation and their right to the presumption of innocence due to the statements made in a book, a documentary and an interview, in a case extended to the Portuguese State.

The ECHR understands that the statements made by Amaral were based on facts and that, if the image of the McCanns had been damaged during the investigations, it would not be attributable to what the former commissioner said, since the suspicions about them - -and the media stir they generated- were already public before.

Thus, it assumes that "the publication of the book undeniably caused anger, anguish and discomfort" to the plaintiffs, but none of Amaral's statements appear to have affected the "social relationships" of Maddie's parents or their "legitimate" efforts to try to find the whereabouts of his daughter.

The judges of the European court also consider valid some sentences of the Portuguese Supreme Court with which, in 2017, it rejected the civil lawsuits presented by the McCann family, since they understand that they do not imply considering them guilty of the facts or even feeding a minimum suspicion .

In May 2022, fifteen years have passed since Madeleine McCann disappeared in Praia da Luz and, after all kinds of comings and goings in the case, the German authorities pointed this same year to the first suspect in the disappearance, Christian Brueckner, who already He was serving a sentence for sexual offences.